I once fulfilled my sole annual Mass attendance at Notre Dame in Paris, which is a pretty good place for bad Catholics to pretend they are actually quite holy for an hour.
Settled into my spot on the pew I started practicing my “mmmm, I understand” face, in preparation for a service entirely in French, from which I was sure to catch about three words.
Then in swarmed the busload from Malibu, with their large bottoms snuggly encased in khaki shorts, his-and-hers T-shirts, and enough happy snappy cameras to document a World War.
“Oh, look honey, those windows are sooooo pretty… and check out those darling little candles, I wonder if they sell them in the gift shop”. My pious reverie was broken.
As spiritual obstruction goes it was, admittedly, on the lower end of the scale. But it annoyed the hell (oops, sorry) out of me at the time and I thought about it a lot when a couple of years later I visited Uluru.
Unless you’ve been there it is impossible to understand what a profound presence the rock is. Those of us who have seen it can try to describe it to the uninitiated, we’ve all seen the pictures, but it is one of those things you have to see for yourself to comprehend.
The Northern Territory government is furious at Federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett over a plan to stop visitors climbing to the top of Uluru.
His Federal counterpart Greg Hunt is spitting chips over the 10-year draft management plan for Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park.
“Under the Garrett plan, visitors from around Australia and the world would be stopped from completing the majestic and exhilarating journey,” Mr Hunt said yesterday.
“I have always suspected that closing the rock to walkers was on Labor’s agenda. Today we see the start of their plan to end one of the great tourism experiences in Australia.”
This morning Mr Hunt’s spokesman told The Punch the shadow minister had climbed the rock at age 11. In the five visits he has made as an adult he chose not to climb in deference to the request of the traditional owners, but he “respects the views of those to did wish to climb.”
It’s weird to me then that he sees Uluru as “tourist experience,” like it’s the same thing as climbing the Harbour Bridge.
It’s like equating the Sistine Chapel to Disneyland, or Istanbul’s Blue Mosque to the London Eye.
There are signs at Uluru requesting visitors respect the wishes of the traditional owners not to climb. Despite this 100,000 every year stomp past the sign and fulfill their “tourism experience.”
These are the same people who take their shoes off before entering a mosque, because that’s what they’re asked to do. They dress modestly in temples and (mostly) talk quietly in cathedrals, and resist the urge to take flash photographs of the Mona Lisa.
I find it secretly pleasing that quite a few of them over the years have died while trying to scale Uluru. For many it is the most exercise they’ve had in decades.
And the stupid thing is, I can’t possibly imagine how climbing Uluru is the best way to appreciate the spiritual, historical and physical enormity of it.
I went there with a mid-sized group, almost all of whom were determined to “conquer” the rock. So well before dawn I set off by myself to walk anti-clockwise the whole way around. In those four or five hours I ran into very few other people and most of the time felt like I had the whole thing to myself.
I saw views and angles those 100,000 missed out on while they were huffing and puffing and pushing their way through the crowd on the face of the rock.
Later, with everyone else, I watched it change colour a million times as the sun set.
As “tourism experiences” go, I bet mine was more memorable and special than any of theirs. And according to The Australian this morning, research done three years ago found 98 per cent of visitors would still come to Uluru even if climbing was banned.
Peter Garrett, frustratingly, hasn’t said what he thinks about a ban. His office says there are two months for people to express their view before the draft management plan is signed off by the park’s board, and banning the climb is just one of the options being considered.
Come on Minister. How about you lead the discussion rather than follow it?
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